In other big news that has just hit the media of the game industry recently is that Scalebound, a game developed by Platinum Games, has been according to Microsoft been cancelled. For this, a representative from Microsoft gave this statement to both IGN , Kotaku and Eurogamer;

“After careful deliberation, Microsoft Studios has come to the decision to end production for Scalebound. We’re working hard to deliver an amazing lineup of games to our fans this year, including Halo Wars 2, Crackdown 3, State of Decay 2, Sea of Thieves and other great experiences. For more information on our 2017 plans, please visit: http://bit.ly/2i1E5bV.”

It’s sad that such actions are being taken by Microsoft so early in the 2017 race between game companies, but to get to the matter at hand, just what was Scalebound and how did this happen in a way that’s familiar yet sorrowful.

Well, Scalebound was a game for the Xbox Scorpio which got revealed back in 2014 at E3 via an astonishing cinematic trailer, though it wasn’t until 2015 at Gamescom in Germany that Microsoft came out with a release window on around “holiday 2016”. The game itself was to have a human protagonist be played in a third-person action camera view as well as his sidekick which was a dragon nonetheless. The dragon could then through commands be given guidance to either move, attack or be controlled directly which then would go from a third-person view to a first-person view instead.

However, that was not all it promised. At E3 2016, Microsoft at their Xbox conference came out with a gameplay video (though uncertain if it was scripted or not) that showed everybody both in the hall and online that Scalebound was gonna have co-op to boot and it was a glorious response it got from people around the world on social media.

Another player drops in to help in co-op beat a difficult opponent.

This game was none other than the child successor of the director behind Resident Evil 2, Devil May Cry, Okami and Bayonetta, known to the world as Hideki Kamiya.

Which is where we get to the sad news that came out a day after the announcement from Microsoft and Platinum Games. Director Hideki Kamiya has out on his twitter account apologised to fans, to where he feels they have been let down by the game’s cancellation. From an articel on Eurogamer, they go into more detail on how the director have been mostly silent on social media since late December.

As you may have already heard, Scalebound has unfortunately been canceled. I’m very sorry to everyone who was looking forward to this game.

His tweets began to come out as shown here after a blog post came forth on Platinum Games’ Official Blog where they acknowledged the bad news. The post itself said this to its fanbase; “We’re sorry to say that on January 9, 2017, Microsoft Studios announced the cancellation of Scalebound. We are very disappointed things ended up this way, especially since we know many of our fans were looking forward to this game as much as we were.”

Though continued on, CEO of Platinum Games, Kenichi Sato had this to add:

“Going forward, we will strive to continue delivering high-quality games to you, starting with NieR:Automata in March, and including products like Granblue Fantasy Project Re:Link and Lost Order in the future.

“We will keep working hard to meet your expectations and we look forward to your continued support!”

After all this had come out, Kamiya himself had expected a complete backlash aganst the cancellation, that according to the articel quote “Eurogamer sources suggest was due to the game missing a major milestone at the end of last year, after the pressure of production forced multiple senior team members to temporarily step away from the project.” No, instead after many people and fans was more kind and supportive to him, he came out with a tweet saying how grateful for the word of kindness he was.

I thought I would get lots of savage messages, but in reality I’m getting lots of warm messages. Thank you.
(´；_；`)

Last time anybody saw Scalebound was back at Gamescom, where with its gameplay video seemed to be in promising shape. However, at this time it’s unclear whether Scalebound has the potential to be revived by Platinum or a bigger publisher like Sony, looking to do what Microsoft couldn’t with this project.

I certainly in my own opinion hope that Platinum Games doesn’t drop the game just yet and that maybe Sony as a publisher could pick it up instead, just so both fans as well as the director and development team themself. Could have a second chance at getting to know the experience this what seemed to be a great game.

However, I would love to hear more about you guys’ opinion and thoughts about this. I know myself I would have gotten it when it came out, but as you know I’m always interested in hearing if you had a different perspective on this whole charade.

Stay Cozy and have a nice day!

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Published by TriformTrinity

Gamer, blogger, Youtuber and lover of all film. A guy who loves to analyze stuff and from that, give his opinion about everything in form of news, reviews, simple commentary and occasionally chucking down his coffee while doing it.
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